Gaps in Knowledge and Awareness Related to Equipment Safety Among Nursing Personnel Working in Pediatric and Neonatal Medical- Surgical Icus at Tertiary Care Hospital

Equipments are the essential part of any pediatric or neonatal ICU required for monitoring and care to children and neonates during the ICU stay. The present study was conducted to identify gaps in knowledge and awareness related to equipment safety among nursing personnel working in pediatric and neonatal medical-surgical ICUs in a tertiary care hospital. Sixty one nursing personnel working in pediatric and neonatal ICUs were enrolled using universal sampling technique. A structured pretested and validated tool containing knowledge and awareness questionnaire was used to collect the data ( α = 0.82). More than half of the nursing personnel were between the age group of 26-35 years with the mean age of 30.24 ± 6.56 (22–46). Majority nursing personnel were female (93.4%), working as sister grade II (77%, working as bedside nurses) in PICU ((42.6%), with most having BSc Nursing as their professional qualification, Majority of nursing personnel (83.6%) had not attended in-service education programme and half of them did not have any bedside demonstration of the equipments prior to its installation in the unit. Majority nursing personnel were having medium knowledge (68.9%) and awareness scores (65.6%) related to equipment safety with mean knowledge and awareness scores of 11.5 ± 1.7 (6-16) and 32.9 ± 3.4 (20–40) respectively. No correlation was observed between knowledge and awareness scores of the nursing personnel (p> 0.05).